I don't and I don't think captchas work against bots at all anymore. Sure work great against humans. Would never put someone through that.
Honestly the best anti-bot measure I found in the stuff I code myself is ... just telling them to wait 30 seconds and try again.
Not very eager to dig into the Mastodon codebase to add it though. And yeah, the problem with any anti-bot measure that works is that if it's universally adopted, bot farmers just need to figure out how to circumvent that particular thing, once.
As you said, cat and mouse, and I'm not sure who's who these days.
https://loud.computer/@virtulis/116210111874634351
nostr:note1xw2m62qa7m273nl4ejhm8rw4y7ynpaaw2ekuzcx2x0xy7pgmyqssymqwpz
will have been preventable
npub1dy…9gett
2026-10-14 17:39:54 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…f8z0
Author Public Key
npub1dyadx500pmdthnapp0dpd7kg7n9kz02uushkdwlzrzmyryrj3dpq09gettSeen on
wss://relay.momostr.pinkPublished at
2026-10-14 17:39:54 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "2d533ccd8a1dbabd281d3e318cdd2234a3705b56964898413f710102524cb838",
"pubkey": "693ad351ef0edabbcfa10bda16fac8f4cb613d5ce42f66bbe218b64190728b42",
"created_at": 1791999594,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"p",
"bad249de04d9f6520c5ee9030a8041a096bfe2eae2f1fa22f35d0a9e5fcca613"
],
[
"q",
"3395bd281df6d5e8cff5ccafb38dd5278930f7ae566dc160ca33cc4f051b2021"
],
[
"p",
"693ad351ef0edabbcfa10bda16fac8f4cb613d5ce42f66bbe218b64190728b42"
],
[
"proxy",
"https://loud.computer/@virtulis/117440485431995714",
"web"
],
[
"e",
"0fb6324b92fe0071d30b8587ddb35be4aa766cf6da90bb56d2d7b5012d30b340",
"",
"reply",
"bad249de04d9f6520c5ee9030a8041a096bfe2eae2f1fa22f35d0a9e5fcca613"
],
[
"e",
"fb8a9f53bbf5ee1d817e55c8edd4dde213b6259e6552a84107afd7612625c2a2",
"",
"root",
"bad249de04d9f6520c5ee9030a8041a096bfe2eae2f1fa22f35d0a9e5fcca613"
],
[
"proxy",
"https://loud.computer/users/virtulis/statuses/117440485431995714",
"activitypub"
],
[
"L",
"pink.momostr"
],
[
"l",
"pink.momostr.activitypub:https://loud.computer/users/virtulis/statuses/117440485431995714",
"pink.momostr"
],
[
"-"
]
],
"content": "I don't and I don't think captchas work against bots at all anymore. Sure work great against humans. Would never put someone through that.\n\nHonestly the best anti-bot measure I found in the stuff I code myself is ... just telling them to wait 30 seconds and try again.\n\nNot very eager to dig into the Mastodon codebase to add it though. And yeah, the problem with any anti-bot measure that works is that if it's universally adopted, bot farmers just need to figure out how to circumvent that particular thing, once.\n\nAs you said, cat and mouse, and I'm not sure who's who these days.\n\nhttps://loud.computer/@virtulis/116210111874634351\nnostr:note1xw2m62qa7m273nl4ejhm8rw4y7ynpaaw2ekuzcx2x0xy7pgmyqssymqwpz\n",
"sig": "edbc66c960318bcf0326edab69b94c59d91aac438877bcd7ead1218e394bad7742a7163fcfcc2ad26e775e1ff755f13f33840fddf3f3941a74b7157687f675e7"
}